She's alive! I thought. No wonder I hadn't seen her in heaven with the others!
I sighed. Poor Taylor...
The door to my cell slid open on its own, revealing a bloody human arm.
The same arm, the same hand, that baptized me. I cried.
A trail of blood led from the gory appendage to the entrance to the prison, which also stood open.
With Hissandra nowhere to be found.
I crept out into the lab, searching for signs of my sister.
The rest of Taylor's body lay sprawled across the carpet near the door, his throat ripped open, large ragged wounds in his chest, arms and legs, Ss'sik'chtokiwij teethmarks everywhere.
No tracks, no mess other than the one I encountered on the way over, almost like Hissandra had used a napkin.
As I prayed next to the man's body, I heard footsteps, and Roger talking to someone as he came up the hallway.
"I don't know what's going on with the cameras. I mean, you can physically see the video, but the system isn't recording anything. I checked the cables, rebooted the computer, I even tried reinstalling Hawkeye, but I'm still not getting video files."
"The software's antiquated." Nasal, monotone. Craig's voice. "The company went out of business ten years ago. I think we're going to have to pull some software from satellite relay."
"You know, I've heard some very good things about Oculus-Oh Jeez."
Craig asked God to condemn `it.'
My captors stared in shock and horror.
"How did he get out!" Craig shouted.
Roger pushed him back with one arm. "Got me. I locked everything up before I left." He pushed buttons on a phone, holding it to his ear. "Camestres and Datisi. Come up to the lab. We have a situation."
I noticed, much to my dismay, how bad this looked: My claws, bloody from examining the corpse, the trail of blood leading directly to my cell..."This isn't what it looks like."
Both scientists looked skeptical, more so than the usual amount required of being a scientist. Both stood away from me at a wary distance.
"It never is," Roger scoffed. "What I want to know is how you got the door open. To the best of my knowledge, that door is opened with a security key."
"Did Taylor open the cell for you?" Craig asked.
"I didn't do this! It was my sister! Hissandra!"
Roger shook his head. "According to our most recent data, you're the only xenomorph on the base. Unless you're talking about your little cell buddy..."
"You haven't found any? Not even at the atmosphere processing station?"
"It's only you, bud."
"That means you have some explaining to do."
The Mara clones came running with their shock collar and cattleprod. Seconds later, I drooled on the floor of my cell, staring dully at the pair of labcoats through the window.
I glanced into the other cell. To my relief, I found Sarah still alive and safe.
"What do you think?" Roger asked his partner. "You think we could rig up a leash for him? Put it in the back corner, away from the door?"
"You saw what he can do to the carpet. You'd have to make it acid proof and electrified. Frankly, I'm surprised it hasn't etched its way through the floor."
"I didn't kill that man!" I slurred. "My conscience is clean before God!"
Roger crossed his arms. "That's what scares me about religion. It gives people an excuse to commit all sorts of atrocities without feeling guilty about it."
"Did God...tell you to kill?"
A loaded question. If you say yes, you admit to doing wrong. If you say no, you still admit to doing wrong. "I didn't kill Taylor! He was my brother in Christ! He was a dear friend! I'm telling you it was Hissandra!"
Craig leaned toward Roger. "He's having a dissociative break. Hissandra must be the name for his other personality."
"What kind of name is Hissandra anyway? I mean, the names he's given me for his mother and...the one he cut open, all had names that were alien sounding. I think you're right, Craig."
The two looked at me like I a rabid dog ready to be put down.
"The wires in the door lock are untouched, and I see no signs of interior breaching," Roger said.
"It's like I said before. Taylor had to have opened the door."
"That's just the thing. I don't recall ever giving him the key code."
"Maybe Ernie memorized it. He's probably heard it enough."
"I suppose you're right. Do you think he has some kind of telepathic mind control power?"
"Telepathy doesn't exist. That's pseudoscience. I think the more likely scenario is simple persuasion. Taylor, being a religious fellow, got guilted into opening the cell when the creature quoted a few bible passages."
Roger sighed heavily and nodded. "He did strike me as a bit gullible."
A few hours later, after the mess got cleaned up, I had a leash around my neck, affixed to a panel bolted to the wall. Whenever I got even a foot near the door, or stretched the chain to its fullest extent elsewhere, I got a jolt, which gained greater and greater strength the more I tugged upon it.
A Mara unit also got assigned a permanent station outside our cells.
Since they had probes in me anyway, the two also subjected me to a lie detector test.
Not that unusual. When studying my lobes, they had performed a similar test. State two facts, then try to lie about something. The problem: They never saw me try really hard in that arena.
"What is your name?" Roger asked me.
"Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik."
Craig studied a small computer. "True."
"Last night, you ate pizza."
"Yes."
"True."
"Tell me something untruthful."
"Yesterday it was warm and sunny outside."
"Lie," said Craig.
"Tell me another."
I sighed. "It was so nice outside the other day that you let me run around the base and play in the mud."
"It seems to be working."
Roger cleared his throat. "Did you murder Taylor Ferguson?"
"No. I did not."
Craig frowned at the screen. "I'm seeing no fluctuations. Try `kill.'"
"What's the difference?" Roger asked.
"It's a Catholic thing. The argument is that we have the fifth commandment mistranslated, that it should be `Thou shalt not murder' rather than `thou shalt not kill,' meaning that you can't kill a man in cold blood, but when you murder a man in cold blood on a battlefield, it's technically justified and they define that as `killing.' It's a sin to murder, but not to kill. See how that works?"
Roger nodded. "I see what you're saying...like it's only killing when you cut up a cow or pig for hamburger..."
He addressed me again. "Did you kill Taylor Ferguson?"
I shook my head violently. "No, no, a thousand times no! I did not kill or murder him! It was my sister! She killed him!"
Craig squinted at the screen. "It says true, but..."
Roger leaned over his shoulder, peering at the device. "Are you sure that thing is working?"
Craig tapped some buttons on his little computer.
They tried the test again, with slightly different questions. Same result.
"It wouldn't surprise me if it could fool the detection system. Their brains appear to be rather advanced..."
Roger breathed through his nose. "What about that thing that burst out of Russell? Could that have killed Taylor?"
"Too small. I've seen the bodies from those attacks. The animal that made these gouges would have to be much larger than that. And the muscular strength required to remove the limb in such a way..."
Roger frowned as he nodded in agreement. "I think you're right about him lying, but just to play devil's advocate, if there were another one of them lurking around somewhere, hypothetically, what measures might we take to prevent a similar incident?"
"I suppose, then, hypothetically, we could set up some motion sensors around the perimeter. You don't seriously believe there's this alleged `Hissandra' on the property, do you?"
"No, but I do believe that it's a big planet, and there could be others like him somewhere. In the event that one decides to drop by, I want to be ready."
Craig rolled his eyes. "We have ten machines. The others are being used to survey the eastern lowland. You're probably just going to pick up a lot of children and crew people."
Roger raised his hands. "Not a problem. The sensors have cameras on them. I'm fine with sorting through dozens of crew photos. I just want to make sure we're safe."
He spent about two hours setting up the equipment. I prayed and knitted. I tried to read, but felt far too anxious to sustain an interest in much of anything but Psalms.
The scientists had an easier time testing Sarah's honesty. The basic lie detector and a few brain scans indicated that she either told the truth about me being innocent, or was an amazing liar. They leaned toward the latter, or maybe thought she'd been asleep at the time of the murder (no camera footage).
They left her more or less `alone' after that. They sampled her blood frequently, she had to wear electrodes on her head all the time, and she got asked to fill out educational modules on a computer every day, but on the whole she kind of had it easy.
Weeks passed by with little event.
The Christians with which I once enjoyed regular worship and fellowship, of course, got banned from the premises.
Roger checked and double checked the recordings from the motion sensors, but had nothing of interest to share with his colleague. I started feeling like I really did imagine my sister.
The tests became more...personal.
It seemed like every day they tried to pinpoint the part of my brain responsible for truth and deception, or which activated when presented with certain stimuli.
Some exercises proved to be rather amusing. In one instance, a rather overweight looking woman (a well guarded overweight woman, I might add) got brought in, and they asked me whether her uniform made her look fat. They tested me thus with three other women. It seemed that each had been coached to get very upset, no matter which way I responded.
Roger and Craig found my brain patterns `interesting' when I struggled not to offend each woman. I, on the other claw, found it interesting that a human male would actually want to deposit his chromosomes into a host with such a fickle temperament.
Ironically, I acquired a new friend in the process: Offended Woman Number 2, A.K.A. Becky Butler.
Known to some as `Betsy Blubber' or `Betty Butterfingers,' the plump, dark haired maiden would often stop by the lab to give me snacks or little gifts. Although I soon discovered that Hostess Twinkies induce vomiting in Ss'sik'chtokiwij, I appreciated the other things immensely, like the Etch A Sketch, my carved wooden likeness, and her plastic Smurf collection. The dumplings she made were nice, too.
I shared my gifts with Sarah, though the overcaution of the researchers made it a little difficult.
After they had tabulated the results from some recent experiments, they again put me under a lie detector test. "Did you kill Taylor Ferguson?"
Of course at this point, the results got faulted because I had become "desensitized to the question", so I got asked something more perverse like "What was your favorite part to eat on Taylor's body?" It only prompted me to insist on the truth more strongly.
They tested me with Poker, mounting a camera on the wall above my shoulder while Roger played me through the door. They read my brain patterns, alternating between cheating and playing fair at random intervals.
I think they enjoyed torturing me, for half the time my cards would fall on the floor a little too far out of reach, and I'd either get jolted by my collar or be forced to resort to using small objects to scoot the cards closer, until they finally decided to deal into a tray.
I must have played that game for hours, trying to resist Roger's cunning ploys to get me to reveal my `hand.'
I got good at it. Roger said I was the ideal player "because I have no eyes," that I had market potential in Vegas.
Sarah, feeling left out, would join me in a couple plays, but after a few inconvenient deals, we opted for the two player electronic version.
Once our gaming sessions finally concluded, the researchers would spend days studying the video, comparing it to the brain activity on file. When not doing that, Roger reviewed the motion sensor data, but only found hundreds of recordings of people moving around, androids, or automated machinery.
After awhile, the scientists ran out of honesty tests.
"What other truth tests can we give him?" Craig asked his associate.
"Well...Ernie's never going into politics, so he doesn't really care about his public image...he has no love life to speak of, so we can't test his honesty there...we can't take him fishing..." He rubbed his stubble. "I thought about truth or dare, but he's already naked, and again, no love life, so I'm not really sure how to make him embarrassed..."
Invisible eye roll. They'd sooner embarrass themselves in the attempt.
One day my mouth got fitted with a device that measured my saliva. The first three prototypes melted, but the fourth held up under acid, and they tested me with it.
On the first trial, Roger stood at the door and read off a list of words that sounded savory. Bacon. Cheeseburger. Barbecue pizza. But then he tricked me by saying "Taylor" and "arm." Hardly fair.
He showed me pictures of food, and recordings of food commercials, followed, disturbingly, by crime scene photographs.
Of course I drooled at precisely the wrong times. I've heard television producers do the same thing by pairing swimsuit models with beer and bacon sandwiches. I guess Roger didn't understand he was advertising.
Things rapidly turned unpleasant for Sarah, too. A few days after my last `human flesh commercial,' Roger entered her cell with an ampule and syringe in his gloved hands. He looked very sorrowful. "Sarah, there's something I've got to tell you. I hope you will understand and not get angry or afraid."
Sarah just stared at him.
He took a deep breath. "Sweetie, as you very well know, you're a clone, and the DAMBALLAH group technically owns you...Well, I've just received word from them regarding your role in the program. It turns out, as a clone, you were given certain enhancements that make you better than regular people. The uh, people at DAMBALLAH, made you with a highly sophisticated immune system."
He held up the bottle for her to see. "This is called Super AIDS. The disease is supposed to be incurable, but there's a chance that if you incorporate this into your system, your body will kill the virus and leave AIDS antibodies in your bloodstream, which we will extract via dialysis.
"Kid, I love you, I wish I didn't have to do this, but you're technically a copyrighted product of the DAMBALLAH Trust, and they're saying you can either have Super AIDS or cancer. Not much of a choice, huh?"
She shook her head and sighed. "Super AIDS."
"All right, Sarah. You're a trooper." The man rolled up the girl's sleeve, tied her arm with a rubber strap. "This will all be over in a minute."
He filled the syringe with yellow liquid from the bottle, tapped and squirted the air bubbles out.
The moment Roger approached her arm with the needle, the girl snatched it out of his hand, stabbing him in the neck.
The man screamed, asking God to eternally condemn `it.' My guess, being Super AIDS, was that God already had.
Standing on the cot, Sarah kicked him in the stomach, tackled him to the floor, and pushed the plunger down.
"Sarah!" I cried in alarm. "This is not a Christian thing to do!"
"`Cursed be he who takes a bribe to slay an innocent person'," she growled, running outside.
In retrospect, Roger probably shouldn't have left the cell door open.